As someone who works in higher ed, this is one of the current administration's decisions that will have the most lasting impact for what I do. Granted, I'm in the field of music, so hopefully it's not one of those "critical fields" but the ripple effect will be huge. Like other universities, we have many Chinese students who are a great enhancement to our program and, indeed, usually don't need financial assistance. We were also in talks for partnering with a prestigious Chinese institution that would have been a boon to our program but I'd imagine that is now in jeopardy. In recent years, the US has done a great job making our universities less and less attractive to Chinese students but this may be a fatal blow if it goes ahead. My only hope is that, like the tariff fiasco, the ping-pong diplomacy going on inside Trump's head will change course on this.
Hits very hard personally, even in retirement, to one who has supervised many Chinese Ph.D. students and worked informally with many more, some of whom are now distinguished scholars in China, Hong Kong, and the US, who welcomed a cohort of Chinese undergraduate exchange students every year for 15 years, many of whom are now distinguished scholars in China and the US. and sponsored many Chinese scholars visiting on faculty-level exchanges. I'm not sure in this case, though, that it's The Leader who's behind this, Secretary Rubio was long one of the senators most hostile to China.
It might very well be Rubio's initiative, but I don't think he would have been so emboldened as to take this extreme action were it not for the atmosphere of permission on such things created by The Leader.
If the CCP managed to actually put an agent into the Trump cabinet he probably couldn't have done more to damage the US then this.
But obviously, it's hardly just this, though certainly that's adding dynamites to a raging inferno. The much bigger elephant in the room is watching the bi-partisan US support of Israel and them throwing everything they say they're about completely out the window for that and then some.
The backlash of disillusionment is already baked into the cake, the only thing anyone can do at this point in the US going forward is to mitigate the damage to be honest, it'll take decades at least to recover.
I had my own recent experience with this craziness. Please indulge me as I describe it.
I had a young Chinese colleague who had recently graduated from Penn State University.
He was a personable, dependable co-worker. I admired his facility in reading and writing English - better than some native English speakers! Amazing to me. And I admired his bravery in getting on a plane to a foreign land where he didn't know anyone and nobody spoke his native language. Such courage in such a young person!
I work at a residential treatment facility for kids who have suffered some of the worst traumas. It was great for our kids to interact with this young man from another country; he was good with the kids, and they liked him.
Then Trump.
As more and more people were being disappeared, and even though my coworker was here legally and had applied to graduate schools, he made the decision to return to China. It's just too dangerous here.
This broke my heart. I cried over this young guy and his situation. I can't even imagine how he felt. I can't even imagine.
That one disgusting, spoiled, manchild in orange paint could upend the lives of so many people, and that so many disgusting, ignorant MAGA Americans could support his actions just seems unbelievable to me.
And, dear God, so, so unfair to my colleague, and even to his family in China who certainly expected that their son, after all his hard work, would have been accepted graciously into this country. I get so angry and just so heartsick that one selfish man and his sycophants could do this to this nice young man and thousands like him.
Just imagine the turmoil caused to so many scholars, their families, and their friends. Big numbers of people that are hard to comprehend till you know one of those people. Each individual person's life and plans defeated. By one fat fuck of a man.
I don't often hate, but I hate Trump. And I work with ignorant people who voted for trump; I will never respect them again. I will work with them and be nice to them, but I have lost all respect for them.
We have a choice: Democracy or the Power Grab. I’ve been looking- waiting to hear about the democratic action plan that will defend our party in 2026 and 2028. In the absence of such a document (not that I would be on the list to receive), I wrote a plan. Its call the Democracy Defense Plan. Here is the executive summary. I’m finding it impossible to get beyond the firewall that blocks access to our government officials. I just want my voice to be heard. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fv1uxDT9ET6wRYDxXYvpnjBkuvG5c4-M4wwPpJ-9YSE/edit?usp=drivesdk
Except I don't think this is driven by the majority of MAGA. I think there are certain members of America's elite who don't want to compete against the numbers of Asian students who are coming from secondary education programs that allow them to out-compete against American elite students. It's not like MAGA are going to go enroll at elite colleges to do that harder work. Many are not even getting into college. But Marco Rubio is a rich kid from a used-to-be-elite Cuban family who then had to grow up not-so-well-off, so he has a chip on his shoulder. As a parent who recently went thru that intense period of getting one's kid off to college amidst the much higher stakes kids face these days than we did, I heard from plenty of affluent parent peers who thought it was all so unfair... and in many ways, it has nothing to do with fairness. These colleges have limited space, as they try to curate some version of a "diverse" population. It's not a realistic enterprise. So Chinese international students are the latest targets of all this resentment politics, with far-reaching rippling effects... But borne of the both stupid and yet real and realistic game of status-seeking in the form of higher ed badges. Lots of parents don't want their kids to compete against what they think is an unfair game. I think that's understandable. But the xenophobia that is engendered and amplified... We need to work on the xenophobia and bigotry parts, separate them from the high stakes of higher ed admissions part.
Chuckle. Don't get your bowels in an uproar. This is just part of the show, albeit there are questions about why 27%+ of students are America's elite universities are foreign. How many foreigners are at China's elite universities?
Sure, it's just part of the show until it's your show that's disrupted.
And who cares how many foreigners are at China's elite universities? This is about America and scholars and immigrants. And this is about America's soft power and one of her biggest exports - educated people who care about America.
As someone who works in higher ed, this is one of the current administration's decisions that will have the most lasting impact for what I do. Granted, I'm in the field of music, so hopefully it's not one of those "critical fields" but the ripple effect will be huge. Like other universities, we have many Chinese students who are a great enhancement to our program and, indeed, usually don't need financial assistance. We were also in talks for partnering with a prestigious Chinese institution that would have been a boon to our program but I'd imagine that is now in jeopardy. In recent years, the US has done a great job making our universities less and less attractive to Chinese students but this may be a fatal blow if it goes ahead. My only hope is that, like the tariff fiasco, the ping-pong diplomacy going on inside Trump's head will change course on this.
Hits very hard personally, even in retirement, to one who has supervised many Chinese Ph.D. students and worked informally with many more, some of whom are now distinguished scholars in China, Hong Kong, and the US, who welcomed a cohort of Chinese undergraduate exchange students every year for 15 years, many of whom are now distinguished scholars in China and the US. and sponsored many Chinese scholars visiting on faculty-level exchanges. I'm not sure in this case, though, that it's The Leader who's behind this, Secretary Rubio was long one of the senators most hostile to China.
It might very well be Rubio's initiative, but I don't think he would have been so emboldened as to take this extreme action were it not for the atmosphere of permission on such things created by The Leader.
If the CCP managed to actually put an agent into the Trump cabinet he probably couldn't have done more to damage the US then this.
But obviously, it's hardly just this, though certainly that's adding dynamites to a raging inferno. The much bigger elephant in the room is watching the bi-partisan US support of Israel and them throwing everything they say they're about completely out the window for that and then some.
The backlash of disillusionment is already baked into the cake, the only thing anyone can do at this point in the US going forward is to mitigate the damage to be honest, it'll take decades at least to recover.
I had my own recent experience with this craziness. Please indulge me as I describe it.
I had a young Chinese colleague who had recently graduated from Penn State University.
He was a personable, dependable co-worker. I admired his facility in reading and writing English - better than some native English speakers! Amazing to me. And I admired his bravery in getting on a plane to a foreign land where he didn't know anyone and nobody spoke his native language. Such courage in such a young person!
I work at a residential treatment facility for kids who have suffered some of the worst traumas. It was great for our kids to interact with this young man from another country; he was good with the kids, and they liked him.
Then Trump.
As more and more people were being disappeared, and even though my coworker was here legally and had applied to graduate schools, he made the decision to return to China. It's just too dangerous here.
This broke my heart. I cried over this young guy and his situation. I can't even imagine how he felt. I can't even imagine.
That one disgusting, spoiled, manchild in orange paint could upend the lives of so many people, and that so many disgusting, ignorant MAGA Americans could support his actions just seems unbelievable to me.
And, dear God, so, so unfair to my colleague, and even to his family in China who certainly expected that their son, after all his hard work, would have been accepted graciously into this country. I get so angry and just so heartsick that one selfish man and his sycophants could do this to this nice young man and thousands like him.
Just imagine the turmoil caused to so many scholars, their families, and their friends. Big numbers of people that are hard to comprehend till you know one of those people. Each individual person's life and plans defeated. By one fat fuck of a man.
I don't often hate, but I hate Trump. And I work with ignorant people who voted for trump; I will never respect them again. I will work with them and be nice to them, but I have lost all respect for them.
Damn them all to hell.
We have a choice: Democracy or the Power Grab. I’ve been looking- waiting to hear about the democratic action plan that will defend our party in 2026 and 2028. In the absence of such a document (not that I would be on the list to receive), I wrote a plan. Its call the Democracy Defense Plan. Here is the executive summary. I’m finding it impossible to get beyond the firewall that blocks access to our government officials. I just want my voice to be heard. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fv1uxDT9ET6wRYDxXYvpnjBkuvG5c4-M4wwPpJ-9YSE/edit?usp=drivesdk
Except I don't think this is driven by the majority of MAGA. I think there are certain members of America's elite who don't want to compete against the numbers of Asian students who are coming from secondary education programs that allow them to out-compete against American elite students. It's not like MAGA are going to go enroll at elite colleges to do that harder work. Many are not even getting into college. But Marco Rubio is a rich kid from a used-to-be-elite Cuban family who then had to grow up not-so-well-off, so he has a chip on his shoulder. As a parent who recently went thru that intense period of getting one's kid off to college amidst the much higher stakes kids face these days than we did, I heard from plenty of affluent parent peers who thought it was all so unfair... and in many ways, it has nothing to do with fairness. These colleges have limited space, as they try to curate some version of a "diverse" population. It's not a realistic enterprise. So Chinese international students are the latest targets of all this resentment politics, with far-reaching rippling effects... But borne of the both stupid and yet real and realistic game of status-seeking in the form of higher ed badges. Lots of parents don't want their kids to compete against what they think is an unfair game. I think that's understandable. But the xenophobia that is engendered and amplified... We need to work on the xenophobia and bigotry parts, separate them from the high stakes of higher ed admissions part.
Chuckle. Don't get your bowels in an uproar. This is just part of the show, albeit there are questions about why 27%+ of students are America's elite universities are foreign. How many foreigners are at China's elite universities?
Sure, it's just part of the show until it's your show that's disrupted.
And who cares how many foreigners are at China's elite universities? This is about America and scholars and immigrants. And this is about America's soft power and one of her biggest exports - educated people who care about America.
It seems like you’re not the one who gets a chill down their spine when the militiamen in Civil War (2024) asks “what kind of American are you?”
I plan to be off this continent long before that might happen to me. I hope Kaiser plans the same.